Dark Vancouver Nights (Harry Potter/Smoke crossover) PG
For all three (four?) of my f-list who have read Tanya Huff's Blood and Smoke books. I am the queen of the run-on sentence!
Dark Vancouver Nights
A Harry Potter/Smoke crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Harry Potter travels to Vancouver to meet his muggle cousin Lee Nicholas... only things aren't always as easy as they seem.
Disclaimer: None of these characters or shows belong to me. In fact, the Smoke/Tony Foster books belong to Tanya Huff and the Harry Potter books belong to JK Rowling, lovely ladies both.
Rating: PG for some swearing and the canon gay.
Setting: After "Smoke and Ashes" (book three in the Smoke series), waaay post the HP series. But before the epilogue thingy, but after Harry married Ginny but before the birth of that first child, the name of whom escapes me as the book is at home and I don't care.
Words: 3,050
Notes: watcher457, this is ALL. YOUR. FAULT. Happy belated! PS This presupposes a knowledge of the Smoke books.
Harry pulled his bag up higher on his lap as he waited patiently for the little old lady in the seat next to him to stand up.
Ginny was right about this, he thought as he stared at the beige fabric coating the airplane ceiling. I should have apparated to the airport and met my cousin downtown.
Cousin. Just...Harry wasn't sure what to think. Harry had inevitably married into the Weasleys, but he still didn't get the whole concept of family. When he had learned about a muggle Canadian cousin (second cousin, actually, via his mother's grandmother's niece), it was Ginny who had made him write that ridiculous letter in the first place. Harry had never expected anything to come of it, and life had carried on.
But the Canadian cousin had actually written back, and now Harry was waiting to disembark from a long metal tube, full of recycled air and bored muggles and no magic in sight.
The old lady finally shuffled into the aisle, Harry stood up, and after some elbows in the ribs, he escaped from the airplane and was disgorged into a cool glass-and-metal cavern.
On the whole, Harry noted around the exhaustion, Vancouver International Airport was nicer than Heathrow.
After what seemed like hours, Harry maneuvered his way thought customs (wand hidden by a myriad of charms and the charming and innocent smile) and down a moving staircase into an open area crowded with people.
Years of fighting evil wizards left Harry with deep-seated paranoia of crowds (and jewelry, but that was another story), so he was scanning the crowd even before he stepped off the staircase. Families were greeting loved ones, some depressed muggles in suits slunk off towards the baggage racks, and in the corner, leaning against a post, looking like he owned the world, was Lee Nicholas.
Swallowing hard against the weird memories of an eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy, Harry raised his hand in a wave to his cousin.
The man spotted Harry and pushed off the pillar. He smiled, and the expression in his emerald green eyes chased away any resemblance to teenage Death Eaters. Lee waved back with one hand, the other hand holding a big paper sign against his leg.
Harry narrowed his eyes at the sign. "Just in case I didn't know who I was?" he asked when he got close enough, thanking his lucky stars that Lee hadn't been waving the "Harry Potter" sign all over the airport. Most likely, no wizard would have been caught dead in the place, but Harry was paranoid for a reason.
Lee's cheeks reddened as he lifted the sign. "A friend at work made it," he explained. "She threatened to put itching powder in my socks if I didn't at least bring it with me to the airport."
"Could she do that?" Harry asked.
"She could and she probably would. Amy has the keys to the wardrobe department."
Right. Harry knew that Lee was an actor on some kind of vampire television show, but their exchanges hadn't really focused on the details. As if Harry could exactly explain what he did for a living, anyway.
"So we can get your luggage and get moving," Lee was saying. "I scored you a hotel right in the middle of downtown and with all the construction and rush hour, it's going to take a little time to grab a cab."
"You don't have a car?" Harry said, digging into his muggle childhood for conversation that didn't include magic.
For some reason, Lee looked away. "I lent it to a friend last night, his brakes failed rather spectacularly last week and his car got totaled and it was like a thing. He said he'd leave it at my condo before he went into work today."
Not certain as to why this revelation seemed to upset Lee, Harry shouldered his backpack and shrugged. "So let's go."
For the first time, Harry wondered if his cousin might be hiding as much as Harry was himself.
As if that was possible.
~~~
The taxi ride, the hotel, even dinner was uneventful. Lee was quite personable and a good conversationalist, filling the gaps in the conversation when Harry wasn't able to answer questions.
Harry had the standard muggle-friendly version of his life story ready -- he worked at a private security firm in London and lived near Devon; was married to a lovely red-head who played semi-professional football; and who had gone to a private school in Scotland just like his mother.
Lee didn't seem to know much about England other than London's social hotspots, and he swallowed all that Harry told him. He seemed perfectly content to play the host, showing Harry around Vancouver, complaining half-heartedly about the inevitable rain, explaining how the life of a television star wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that he could probably get Harry a tour of the studio if he didn't mind they weren't actually shooting until the following week.
Harry's luck seemed to be holding.
A little too well.
After dinner, Lee walked Harry across downtown to pick up his car to drive to the studio. Harry watched out the auto window as the tall glass buildings gave way to industrial land, then to run-down houses and overgrown trees.
"Scenery not like you're used to?" Lee said as he stopped at a traffic light.
"Not really." For a moment, Harry tried to imagine how to explain the massive differences between muggle Vancouver and his life in wizarding England, and came up with a blank. The divide was too great to bridge with words alone. Even if he wanted to, how could Harry explain about real wizards to this muggle actor?
Even an actor who played sidekick to a vampire on TV wouldn't buy it.
"Yeah, it's a bit much." Lee concentrated on traffic for a few minutes. "Can I ask you a question? Why did you write to me last spring?"
Saying my wife made me do it sounded childish and hurtful in Harry's mind, and he had to admit to himself that it wasn't really true. "My parents died when I was young," he said after a moment. Lee nodded. "I didn't know I had family out here until last year when my mother's will went through probate, and it seemed like a good idea to..." To what? Find out about the family that hadn't been slaughtered by Voldemort? "To meet you," he finished lamely.
"Hey, no worries," Lee said. "I get the family thing. It's just been my mom and me for a long time. The family's not any thicker on the ground here than you are back in Jolly Old England."
Not for the first time, Harry wondered exactly what Dumbledore had been thinking when he'd left baby Harry with the Durselys. If only... Harry shook his head. Dumbledore was very, very dead and there was no point in thinking about these things.
The sun had set over the warehouse roofs when Lee pulled his car into a parking stall next to a giant white van. Half a dozen automobiles dotted the black pavement, but there was no sign of human life.
Lee slammed the car door. The sound echoed ominously to Harry's ears. "Everyone's going to be working late getting stuff ready for next week," Lee explained. "We come back from hiatus for the second season."
Wind whistled through the empty spaces, and out of the corner of his eye Harry would almost swear he saw a tumbleweed coast by. Then, something else darted back out into the shadows.
Not good.
"Look, Lee, why don't you go inside," Harry suggested as he turned towards the wavering shadows. "I need to call home."
Lee didn't move. "You can use the phone inside."
Deeper in the shadows, something moved, black on black. Without a second thought, Harry's wand was in his hand. "I'll use my mobile, go inside!" He was barking out orders in his Auror voice, but that was certainly no cat in the shadows.
A soft serpentine hiss sounded from the black.
"We should both go inside," Lee said, his voice rising in urgency. "CB may kill us for calling long-distance on the office line, but I can tell him that my agent--"
Lee had stepped along side another shadow as he spoke. Without warning, the hissing sounded again and Harry knew he had fallen into the trap. He whirled to see a giant black thing shoot out from the shadows across the lot and grab Lee's leg.
The thing pulled Lee off his feet at the same time as Harry shot a stunner into the darkness, narrowly missing his cousin as the man fell to the ground. Harry adjusted his aim and fired two more stunners. The thing let go of Lee, and Harry sent a bolt of red fire at the shadows. The thing exploded in a burst of hissing flame, then the parking lot fell dark and silent.
For a moment.
Then Lee scrambled to his feet. "What the fuck was that?" he demanded, breathing hard.
"A cat?" Harry suggested, wand still in his hand. He hated the idea of using memory charms on muggles, especially a cousin, but...
Lee put up his hands and shook his head. "I so don't want to hear it!" He whirled and walked across the pavement towards the lit door in the side of the building.
Bugger! Harry followed his cousin through the door, pocketing his wand as he went. I should have told Ginny that this was a bad idea!
He made it through the door in time to see Lee disappearing through another door on the far side of the lobby. At a desk on the side of the room, a young woman with black and purple hair glared at him. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Lee's cousin," Harry said, not stopping.
"Oh, Harry!" the girl said, brightening. She bounced to her feet and followed Harry. "Did Lee really take my sign to Why-Vee-Are?"
"To where?" Harry asked. He pushed through the door and came to a stop. He was in a hallway with lots of other doors and no Lee.
The girl elbowed Harry aside. "The airport," she said as she kicked open a door marked 'Soundstage'. "He told me he'd take the sign."
"You must be Amy," Harry muttered. He spotted his cousin stalking across the large room around half-built wooden walls. "Great. Lee!"
Lee ignored him. "Where's Tony?" Lee asked a bearded man beside a giant light.
"In Raymond Dark's office," the man said, stepping aside as Lee plowed on. "What's wrong?"
"I heard a hissing outside," Amy told the man as she hurried past. "Really weird."
"Like what, a gas leak?" the man said in a joking tone, then his face went blank. "Amy?"
"Like it's ever a good sign when Lee's shouting Tony's name?" she snapped.
"Depends on the night--"
"Zev!"
"Kidding," the man muttered. "Because if the world was really ending Lee would be moving faster."
Harry didn't have time to think his way through that one before Lee skidded to a halt a long wooden desk. The two men going through papers looked up, and the younger man, maybe Harry's age with messy brown hair and an eyebrow ring peeking through the fringe, said, "What?"
"He--" Lee waved violently at Harry. "Harry! He's like you!"
"Your cousin's gay?" the man asked slowly. Then he spotted Lee's bloody pant leg and his whole expression changed. He leaped around the desk, scattering papers as he went. The older man made a protest as the pages fluttered to the ground. "You're bleeding! What happened?"
"There were these shadows and they started hissing and--" Lee started to say, then three people spoke at once.
"I told you I heard something hissing like a gas leak!" Amy said triumphantly.
"It wasn't the shadows, we were here on the soundstage the whole time!" the man with the eyebrow ring interjected as he grabbed Lee's arm.
And as if that wasn't confusing enough, the bearded man shook his head and said, "Shadows was last season."
Harry gripped his wand in his pocket, trying desperately to figure out how he'd lost control of the scene, when a voice interrupted and brought everything to a halt.
"Mr. Nicholas!"
Everyone froze, including Harry. Then everyone swiveled as one to the source of the sound.
The man standing in the shadows, shadows again! was at first glance about ten feet tall and made of solid muscle. Then Harry blinked and the man was merely tall and well-built in an expensive muggle suit.
The man stepped forward into the light, his eyebrows drawn down. "Mr. Nicholas, is the world ending?"
What bothered Harry the most was that the question was completely serious.
Some of the fight went out of Lee. "I don't think so."
"Indeed." The icy glance slid to Harry. "And who is this on my soundstage?"
Lee pushed his hair out his eyes, but he didn't shake off the young man gripping his other arm. "This is my cousin, Harry."
"And why is he here?"
Amy held up her hand. "Mr. Bane--"
"In a moment." Mr. Bane physically turned to look more intently at Harry. "Mr...."
"Potter," Harry said, tight-lipped.
"Mr. Potter, we have resume shooting our second season in a few days. In order to do that, I need my actors and my soundstage in one piece."
"I heard a gas leak," Amy piped up again, but Mr. Bane ignored her.
"CB, maybe I should go look outside," said the young man with the eyebrow ring. Harry expected Mr. Bane-- CB, to ignore him as Amy had been ignored, but the man nodded.
"I will not tolerate any delays on the shooting schedule, Mr. Foster," CB said. "Call me if the world does come to an end," he called as he walked away.
When a door closed behind CB, the whole room let out a breath as one. "Are you okay?" the young man asked Lee. "Your leg--"
"He's not the one stuck sorting the dailies," the older man on the floor muttered. "Amy, Zev, a little help?"
"Sure, Peter," Amy chirped. "So, you're a wizard like Tony?" she asked Harry.
Harry's insides turned to ice. He had hoped that no one picked up on that little remark--
"Can the world really stand another Tony Foster?" Peter muttered.
"I'm standing right here!" Tony said indignantly.
"Doing a lovely job of holding up Lee!" Peter snapped. "Don't you have to see what happened outside? Hurry up and get back in here, we need someone to order Chinese for dinner."
Tony stopped glowering at Harry and cast his glare at Peter. "Amy knows the number."
"Hey, ordering Kosher Chinese is hard!"
"I know a Jewish Chinese place on Kingsway," Zev put in.
"Really?"
"Sweet and sour chicken all the way."
Tony hauled Lee across the floor past Harry. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Lee muttered. "I'm just fucking sick of being rescued by wizards."
Harry winced. And couldn't help notice that Tony did the same thing, only Tony also let go of Lee's arm and stepped away.
"It was a Dra'osh," Harry said reluctantly. "You know, a dark-snake with eight mouths."
Tony stared. "What are you talking about?"
Harry looked closer at the young man. "Didn't you learn about these things at school?"
Tony blinked. "What kind of high school did you go to?" he asked. "I may have dropped out in eighth grade but I doubt they ever covered this shit in Home Ec."
Now Lee was staring at Harry. "You did stuff like this in school?"
An uneasy feeling was growing in Harry's stomach. "Are you a wizard?" he asked Tony.
In response, Tony held out his hand. Harry had only a moment to see a strange scar etched onto the man's palm before a wooden cross flew through the air and slapped into the man's hand.
Lee raised one eyebrow. "Melodramatic much, Tony?"
Tony flushed. "It was handy!" he said, dropping the cross on a nearby gorilla suit. "I can just do stuff like that."
Harry was beginning to feel ill. This young man was an untrained wizard who didn't need a wand or, to any appearance, to vocalize his spells.
And, if Harry's eyes did not deceive him from the way Lee had his hand on Tony's lower back, he was "involved" with Harry's cousin.
Just bloody perfect.
"Harry had a... magic stick or a wand or something," Lee was saying.
In spite of everything, Tony almost laughed. "Dude, you have a wand? Like Gandalf?"
"Who?"
"Don't they have those books in England?" Tony started walking again. "Or like movies or anything?"
"Things are a little different where I'm from," Harry hedged, but Tony pushed through the front door and was suddenly holding a ball of light in his hand, directing it at the parking lot shadows.
Harry almost walked into a bike rack. No wand, no incantation, and Tony had cast a perfectly controlled non-burning light source.
This day keeps getting worse.
"Nothing here," Tony muttered. He closed his fist on the light. "Looks like you got the Drano-thing."
"Not that my tailor's going to agree," Lee snarked.
"Do what Mason would do and charge it to CB." Tony gave Lee a tentative smile. "You're a superstar and all that."
Lee made a face. "Are you comparing me to Mason?"
"Only in the ways that don't count."
"You mentioned something about shadows last season?" Harry interjected, trying to regain a little control over the situation.
Tony waved his hand. "Something big and shadowy wanted to take over the world. We stopped it."
"And the gas leak?"
Lee shrugged. "We needed something to tell the police."
That one Harry could understand. After all, how many muggle deaths at the hands of Dementors and Death Eaters had been explained away by 'gas leaks'?
As Harry tried to mentally work his way through the past half hour, Tony fixed him with a steely glare. "So," he said. "You're a wizard."
It seemed useless to deny it, so Harry just nodded.
"Good or evil?"
Harry sighed. It was going to be a long night.
end
Dark Vancouver Nights
A Harry Potter/Smoke crossover
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Harry Potter travels to Vancouver to meet his muggle cousin Lee Nicholas... only things aren't always as easy as they seem.
Disclaimer: None of these characters or shows belong to me. In fact, the Smoke/Tony Foster books belong to Tanya Huff and the Harry Potter books belong to JK Rowling, lovely ladies both.
Rating: PG for some swearing and the canon gay.
Setting: After "Smoke and Ashes" (book three in the Smoke series), waaay post the HP series. But before the epilogue thingy, but after Harry married Ginny but before the birth of that first child, the name of whom escapes me as the book is at home and I don't care.
Words: 3,050
Notes: watcher457, this is ALL. YOUR. FAULT. Happy belated! PS This presupposes a knowledge of the Smoke books.
Harry pulled his bag up higher on his lap as he waited patiently for the little old lady in the seat next to him to stand up.
Ginny was right about this, he thought as he stared at the beige fabric coating the airplane ceiling. I should have apparated to the airport and met my cousin downtown.
Cousin. Just...Harry wasn't sure what to think. Harry had inevitably married into the Weasleys, but he still didn't get the whole concept of family. When he had learned about a muggle Canadian cousin (second cousin, actually, via his mother's grandmother's niece), it was Ginny who had made him write that ridiculous letter in the first place. Harry had never expected anything to come of it, and life had carried on.
But the Canadian cousin had actually written back, and now Harry was waiting to disembark from a long metal tube, full of recycled air and bored muggles and no magic in sight.
The old lady finally shuffled into the aisle, Harry stood up, and after some elbows in the ribs, he escaped from the airplane and was disgorged into a cool glass-and-metal cavern.
On the whole, Harry noted around the exhaustion, Vancouver International Airport was nicer than Heathrow.
After what seemed like hours, Harry maneuvered his way thought customs (wand hidden by a myriad of charms and the charming and innocent smile) and down a moving staircase into an open area crowded with people.
Years of fighting evil wizards left Harry with deep-seated paranoia of crowds (and jewelry, but that was another story), so he was scanning the crowd even before he stepped off the staircase. Families were greeting loved ones, some depressed muggles in suits slunk off towards the baggage racks, and in the corner, leaning against a post, looking like he owned the world, was Lee Nicholas.
Swallowing hard against the weird memories of an eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy, Harry raised his hand in a wave to his cousin.
The man spotted Harry and pushed off the pillar. He smiled, and the expression in his emerald green eyes chased away any resemblance to teenage Death Eaters. Lee waved back with one hand, the other hand holding a big paper sign against his leg.
Harry narrowed his eyes at the sign. "Just in case I didn't know who I was?" he asked when he got close enough, thanking his lucky stars that Lee hadn't been waving the "Harry Potter" sign all over the airport. Most likely, no wizard would have been caught dead in the place, but Harry was paranoid for a reason.
Lee's cheeks reddened as he lifted the sign. "A friend at work made it," he explained. "She threatened to put itching powder in my socks if I didn't at least bring it with me to the airport."
"Could she do that?" Harry asked.
"She could and she probably would. Amy has the keys to the wardrobe department."
Right. Harry knew that Lee was an actor on some kind of vampire television show, but their exchanges hadn't really focused on the details. As if Harry could exactly explain what he did for a living, anyway.
"So we can get your luggage and get moving," Lee was saying. "I scored you a hotel right in the middle of downtown and with all the construction and rush hour, it's going to take a little time to grab a cab."
"You don't have a car?" Harry said, digging into his muggle childhood for conversation that didn't include magic.
For some reason, Lee looked away. "I lent it to a friend last night, his brakes failed rather spectacularly last week and his car got totaled and it was like a thing. He said he'd leave it at my condo before he went into work today."
Not certain as to why this revelation seemed to upset Lee, Harry shouldered his backpack and shrugged. "So let's go."
For the first time, Harry wondered if his cousin might be hiding as much as Harry was himself.
As if that was possible.
~~~
The taxi ride, the hotel, even dinner was uneventful. Lee was quite personable and a good conversationalist, filling the gaps in the conversation when Harry wasn't able to answer questions.
Harry had the standard muggle-friendly version of his life story ready -- he worked at a private security firm in London and lived near Devon; was married to a lovely red-head who played semi-professional football; and who had gone to a private school in Scotland just like his mother.
Lee didn't seem to know much about England other than London's social hotspots, and he swallowed all that Harry told him. He seemed perfectly content to play the host, showing Harry around Vancouver, complaining half-heartedly about the inevitable rain, explaining how the life of a television star wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and that he could probably get Harry a tour of the studio if he didn't mind they weren't actually shooting until the following week.
Harry's luck seemed to be holding.
A little too well.
After dinner, Lee walked Harry across downtown to pick up his car to drive to the studio. Harry watched out the auto window as the tall glass buildings gave way to industrial land, then to run-down houses and overgrown trees.
"Scenery not like you're used to?" Lee said as he stopped at a traffic light.
"Not really." For a moment, Harry tried to imagine how to explain the massive differences between muggle Vancouver and his life in wizarding England, and came up with a blank. The divide was too great to bridge with words alone. Even if he wanted to, how could Harry explain about real wizards to this muggle actor?
Even an actor who played sidekick to a vampire on TV wouldn't buy it.
"Yeah, it's a bit much." Lee concentrated on traffic for a few minutes. "Can I ask you a question? Why did you write to me last spring?"
Saying my wife made me do it sounded childish and hurtful in Harry's mind, and he had to admit to himself that it wasn't really true. "My parents died when I was young," he said after a moment. Lee nodded. "I didn't know I had family out here until last year when my mother's will went through probate, and it seemed like a good idea to..." To what? Find out about the family that hadn't been slaughtered by Voldemort? "To meet you," he finished lamely.
"Hey, no worries," Lee said. "I get the family thing. It's just been my mom and me for a long time. The family's not any thicker on the ground here than you are back in Jolly Old England."
Not for the first time, Harry wondered exactly what Dumbledore had been thinking when he'd left baby Harry with the Durselys. If only... Harry shook his head. Dumbledore was very, very dead and there was no point in thinking about these things.
The sun had set over the warehouse roofs when Lee pulled his car into a parking stall next to a giant white van. Half a dozen automobiles dotted the black pavement, but there was no sign of human life.
Lee slammed the car door. The sound echoed ominously to Harry's ears. "Everyone's going to be working late getting stuff ready for next week," Lee explained. "We come back from hiatus for the second season."
Wind whistled through the empty spaces, and out of the corner of his eye Harry would almost swear he saw a tumbleweed coast by. Then, something else darted back out into the shadows.
Not good.
"Look, Lee, why don't you go inside," Harry suggested as he turned towards the wavering shadows. "I need to call home."
Lee didn't move. "You can use the phone inside."
Deeper in the shadows, something moved, black on black. Without a second thought, Harry's wand was in his hand. "I'll use my mobile, go inside!" He was barking out orders in his Auror voice, but that was certainly no cat in the shadows.
A soft serpentine hiss sounded from the black.
"We should both go inside," Lee said, his voice rising in urgency. "CB may kill us for calling long-distance on the office line, but I can tell him that my agent--"
Lee had stepped along side another shadow as he spoke. Without warning, the hissing sounded again and Harry knew he had fallen into the trap. He whirled to see a giant black thing shoot out from the shadows across the lot and grab Lee's leg.
The thing pulled Lee off his feet at the same time as Harry shot a stunner into the darkness, narrowly missing his cousin as the man fell to the ground. Harry adjusted his aim and fired two more stunners. The thing let go of Lee, and Harry sent a bolt of red fire at the shadows. The thing exploded in a burst of hissing flame, then the parking lot fell dark and silent.
For a moment.
Then Lee scrambled to his feet. "What the fuck was that?" he demanded, breathing hard.
"A cat?" Harry suggested, wand still in his hand. He hated the idea of using memory charms on muggles, especially a cousin, but...
Lee put up his hands and shook his head. "I so don't want to hear it!" He whirled and walked across the pavement towards the lit door in the side of the building.
Bugger! Harry followed his cousin through the door, pocketing his wand as he went. I should have told Ginny that this was a bad idea!
He made it through the door in time to see Lee disappearing through another door on the far side of the lobby. At a desk on the side of the room, a young woman with black and purple hair glared at him. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm Lee's cousin," Harry said, not stopping.
"Oh, Harry!" the girl said, brightening. She bounced to her feet and followed Harry. "Did Lee really take my sign to Why-Vee-Are?"
"To where?" Harry asked. He pushed through the door and came to a stop. He was in a hallway with lots of other doors and no Lee.
The girl elbowed Harry aside. "The airport," she said as she kicked open a door marked 'Soundstage'. "He told me he'd take the sign."
"You must be Amy," Harry muttered. He spotted his cousin stalking across the large room around half-built wooden walls. "Great. Lee!"
Lee ignored him. "Where's Tony?" Lee asked a bearded man beside a giant light.
"In Raymond Dark's office," the man said, stepping aside as Lee plowed on. "What's wrong?"
"I heard a hissing outside," Amy told the man as she hurried past. "Really weird."
"Like what, a gas leak?" the man said in a joking tone, then his face went blank. "Amy?"
"Like it's ever a good sign when Lee's shouting Tony's name?" she snapped.
"Depends on the night--"
"Zev!"
"Kidding," the man muttered. "Because if the world was really ending Lee would be moving faster."
Harry didn't have time to think his way through that one before Lee skidded to a halt a long wooden desk. The two men going through papers looked up, and the younger man, maybe Harry's age with messy brown hair and an eyebrow ring peeking through the fringe, said, "What?"
"He--" Lee waved violently at Harry. "Harry! He's like you!"
"Your cousin's gay?" the man asked slowly. Then he spotted Lee's bloody pant leg and his whole expression changed. He leaped around the desk, scattering papers as he went. The older man made a protest as the pages fluttered to the ground. "You're bleeding! What happened?"
"There were these shadows and they started hissing and--" Lee started to say, then three people spoke at once.
"I told you I heard something hissing like a gas leak!" Amy said triumphantly.
"It wasn't the shadows, we were here on the soundstage the whole time!" the man with the eyebrow ring interjected as he grabbed Lee's arm.
And as if that wasn't confusing enough, the bearded man shook his head and said, "Shadows was last season."
Harry gripped his wand in his pocket, trying desperately to figure out how he'd lost control of the scene, when a voice interrupted and brought everything to a halt.
"Mr. Nicholas!"
Everyone froze, including Harry. Then everyone swiveled as one to the source of the sound.
The man standing in the shadows, shadows again! was at first glance about ten feet tall and made of solid muscle. Then Harry blinked and the man was merely tall and well-built in an expensive muggle suit.
The man stepped forward into the light, his eyebrows drawn down. "Mr. Nicholas, is the world ending?"
What bothered Harry the most was that the question was completely serious.
Some of the fight went out of Lee. "I don't think so."
"Indeed." The icy glance slid to Harry. "And who is this on my soundstage?"
Lee pushed his hair out his eyes, but he didn't shake off the young man gripping his other arm. "This is my cousin, Harry."
"And why is he here?"
Amy held up her hand. "Mr. Bane--"
"In a moment." Mr. Bane physically turned to look more intently at Harry. "Mr...."
"Potter," Harry said, tight-lipped.
"Mr. Potter, we have resume shooting our second season in a few days. In order to do that, I need my actors and my soundstage in one piece."
"I heard a gas leak," Amy piped up again, but Mr. Bane ignored her.
"CB, maybe I should go look outside," said the young man with the eyebrow ring. Harry expected Mr. Bane-- CB, to ignore him as Amy had been ignored, but the man nodded.
"I will not tolerate any delays on the shooting schedule, Mr. Foster," CB said. "Call me if the world does come to an end," he called as he walked away.
When a door closed behind CB, the whole room let out a breath as one. "Are you okay?" the young man asked Lee. "Your leg--"
"He's not the one stuck sorting the dailies," the older man on the floor muttered. "Amy, Zev, a little help?"
"Sure, Peter," Amy chirped. "So, you're a wizard like Tony?" she asked Harry.
Harry's insides turned to ice. He had hoped that no one picked up on that little remark--
"Can the world really stand another Tony Foster?" Peter muttered.
"I'm standing right here!" Tony said indignantly.
"Doing a lovely job of holding up Lee!" Peter snapped. "Don't you have to see what happened outside? Hurry up and get back in here, we need someone to order Chinese for dinner."
Tony stopped glowering at Harry and cast his glare at Peter. "Amy knows the number."
"Hey, ordering Kosher Chinese is hard!"
"I know a Jewish Chinese place on Kingsway," Zev put in.
"Really?"
"Sweet and sour chicken all the way."
Tony hauled Lee across the floor past Harry. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Lee muttered. "I'm just fucking sick of being rescued by wizards."
Harry winced. And couldn't help notice that Tony did the same thing, only Tony also let go of Lee's arm and stepped away.
"It was a Dra'osh," Harry said reluctantly. "You know, a dark-snake with eight mouths."
Tony stared. "What are you talking about?"
Harry looked closer at the young man. "Didn't you learn about these things at school?"
Tony blinked. "What kind of high school did you go to?" he asked. "I may have dropped out in eighth grade but I doubt they ever covered this shit in Home Ec."
Now Lee was staring at Harry. "You did stuff like this in school?"
An uneasy feeling was growing in Harry's stomach. "Are you a wizard?" he asked Tony.
In response, Tony held out his hand. Harry had only a moment to see a strange scar etched onto the man's palm before a wooden cross flew through the air and slapped into the man's hand.
Lee raised one eyebrow. "Melodramatic much, Tony?"
Tony flushed. "It was handy!" he said, dropping the cross on a nearby gorilla suit. "I can just do stuff like that."
Harry was beginning to feel ill. This young man was an untrained wizard who didn't need a wand or, to any appearance, to vocalize his spells.
And, if Harry's eyes did not deceive him from the way Lee had his hand on Tony's lower back, he was "involved" with Harry's cousin.
Just bloody perfect.
"Harry had a... magic stick or a wand or something," Lee was saying.
In spite of everything, Tony almost laughed. "Dude, you have a wand? Like Gandalf?"
"Who?"
"Don't they have those books in England?" Tony started walking again. "Or like movies or anything?"
"Things are a little different where I'm from," Harry hedged, but Tony pushed through the front door and was suddenly holding a ball of light in his hand, directing it at the parking lot shadows.
Harry almost walked into a bike rack. No wand, no incantation, and Tony had cast a perfectly controlled non-burning light source.
This day keeps getting worse.
"Nothing here," Tony muttered. He closed his fist on the light. "Looks like you got the Drano-thing."
"Not that my tailor's going to agree," Lee snarked.
"Do what Mason would do and charge it to CB." Tony gave Lee a tentative smile. "You're a superstar and all that."
Lee made a face. "Are you comparing me to Mason?"
"Only in the ways that don't count."
"You mentioned something about shadows last season?" Harry interjected, trying to regain a little control over the situation.
Tony waved his hand. "Something big and shadowy wanted to take over the world. We stopped it."
"And the gas leak?"
Lee shrugged. "We needed something to tell the police."
That one Harry could understand. After all, how many muggle deaths at the hands of Dementors and Death Eaters had been explained away by 'gas leaks'?
As Harry tried to mentally work his way through the past half hour, Tony fixed him with a steely glare. "So," he said. "You're a wizard."
It seemed useless to deny it, so Harry just nodded.
"Good or evil?"
Harry sighed. It was going to be a long night.
end